1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a fluid container containing fluid, a recycling method of a fluid container by refilling a used fluid contained with fluid, and a sealing method of a fluid container.
2. Related Art
An ink cartridge removably mounted in an inkjet printer (hereinafter, referred to as a printer), which is a type of fluid ejection apparatus, for example, is known as a fluid container containing fluid. The ink cartridge includes a container body having a substantially flat box-like shape. An ink chamber is defined in the container body and contains ink as the fluid. An ink inlet hole is formed in a lower surface of the container body. Ink is initially introduced into the ink chamber through the ink inlet hole. A film is applied to the lower surface of the container body to cover the ink inlet hole, thus suppressing leakage of the ink through the ink inlet hole.
As the printer consumes the ink in the ink cartridge mounted in the printer, the ink in the ink chamber decreases and is eventually used up. The used ink cartridge is replaced by a new ink cartridge. Even after the ink cartridge is removed from the printer, the container body of the ink cartridge is still usable for repeated cycles. Japanese Patent No. 3667749 discloses a technique by which a used ink cartridge is recycled as a reusable ink cartridge by refilling the container body with ink. This addresses to efficient use of resources and preservation of environments.
In the method described in Japanese Patent No. 3667749, a film sealing an ink inlet hole is peeled off before an ink cartridge is refilled with ink. The ink is then charged into an ink chamber through the ink inlet hole. Afterwards, the ink inlet hole is sealed with a rubber stopper and a welding film is mounted on the body of the container in such a manner as to cover the ink inlet hole. The welding film is then thermally welded to a portion of the surface of the container body encompassing the ink inlet hole. This seals the ink inlet hole.
In this method, following supply of the ink refill, the ink inlet hole is blocked by the rubber stopper and the welding film is thermally welded to the portion of the surface of the container body encompassing the ink inlet hole. In other words, the method involves blocking the ink inlet hole using the rubber stopper and thermally welding the film after refilling the ink cartridge with the ink. This complicates the refilling of the ink cartridge and increases the number of components needed for sealing, thus raising the costs.
Further, as the welding film, an adhesive tape of polyester, which is a thermally welding adhesive tape of plastic, is employed. Although a polyester based film exhibits an improved thermal welding property, heat resistance of the film is low compared to a polyethylene terephthalate based film generally used as a sealing film of an ink cartridge. This decreases the reliability of the polyester based film. Thus, if blocking the ink inlet hole using the robber stopper is omitted, or the ink inlet hole is only sealed by the polyester based film, to facilitate the sealing of the hole and reduce the number of necessary components and the costs, the low reliability of the polyester based film may lead to leakage of the ink from the ink chamber through the ink inlet hole.